I’m getting so cranky and frustrated with this pregnancy.
Every time we get the reassurance that everything’s fine, no more than a month down the track something else goes wrong.
Daniel called the maternity ward on Thursday evening because I was having stomach pains (really tender in one particular spot) and my abdomen was visibly tightening. They said to bring me in, so I went in and they found a few issues, much to my surprise since I was sure it was ligament pain and had been brushing it off the whole time, being quite rude to Daniel for dragging me into hospital over it.
Their first concern was that I had appendicitis, so they took blood (I got over my phobia pretty quickly; the doctor wouldn’t have a bar of it anyway given the circumstances) and got a surgeon to look over me. Long story short, it wasn’t appendicitis since my blood came back clear (except for an iron deficiency) and my pain didn’t worsen overnight. I was also informed casually that I have a raging case of thrush, which left me more mortified than anything else.
During their internal examination though, the obgyn raised a new concern that my cervix had been quietly trying to open up since it was shortening (under 24mm, normal cervix is meant to be around 30-40mm) and funnelling. This indicates the likelyhood of a pre-term birth; although it’s unlikely he’d be born now (as in this week), as a matter of interest the survival rate is about 40% and the risk of Cerebral Palsy is high. Daniel told his dad that and he suggested that we “get rid of it” if we do have a child with a disability. Blake is our child; we got into this knowing that not all children are born without problems/disabilities and we’ll love and support him no matter what. At least our work has us made us well-informed and skilled in coping with disabilities, instead of being ignorant and bigoted people, which in my opinion are more of a burden and challenge than the people they look down upon.
Anyway, got a bit off track there. Also during the internal ultrasound it was noted that my placenta doesn’t seem to be getting out of the way very much yet either. It’s still low lying, can’t remember how close he said it was now, but it’s just something else requiring rest and observation (and a caeserean if it doesn’t grow out of the way). I was discharged the next day on bed rest, given that the pain had subsided and my uterus was no longer hard as a rock. I was asked to make another appointment with the ob/gyn as soon as possible the following week (which turned out to be Thursday) to see what my cervix is up to, and enjoy yet more bed rest in the meantime. The concern is that the cervix will continue shortening and I’ll go into labour much sooner than I should. Which would suck, not only for the obvious reasons, but also because babies can’t be cared for in the private system here until 34 weeks. I’ll mention again that I hate the Royal Hobart with a passion.
This is just stressful and expensive (despite being insured I still have to pay for all the pathology tests, scans, consultations etc…lucky I didn’t have to pay for the admission since that would’ve been an arm and a leg).
Expensive financially and mentally/physically draining – the next day Daniel ended up in hospital as well with an attack of Pericarditis. Fortunately though, his EKG showed that the Colchicine treatment appears to be working, he still has the classic elevations but not as bad as before. We were very glad to hear that, since the drug is still being researched in it’s effectiveness for pericardial inflammation and it’s a nasty drug to overdose on or take for long periods, so it’s good to know it’s doing him good rather than bad.
